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Free eBook Part One - The Story

The Promise of Justice was conceived as a four part e-book series (The Story, His Story, My Story and Our Story), to tell a story to “face our own truth” so as to “free our history for future flowerings” (Ben Okri).

The first two parts have been published in first editions as separate e-books which can be purchased from various e-book retail outlets, including Amazon and i-Store.

The two separate first editions have recently been revised and published in a single hard-cover book identified as “Book One: History”. This print edition contains text which has been improved on from the first edition e-books. The images do not appear in full colour as they do in the e-books.

Part I: The Story explains the back story that got King Justice Sigcau and his family into trouble with the government of President Jacob Zuma. The trouble started when the Mpondo Royal Family opposed Government plans to offer mining rights to an Australian mining entrepreneur Mark Caruso, over the titanium-rich coastal dunes of the Mpondoland Wild Coast. The plans included a grand scheme conceived by the CEO of the South African National Roads Agency (SANRAL), Mr Nazir Alli, to offer a commercial tolling concession to construct an ambitious new tolled highway, with large bridge crossings over the four deep river gorges that define the Wild Coast.

The Story introduces the key players in what became the dominant environmental news story between 2007 and 2011 – the successful campaign of activism, advocacy and confrontation with the Powers that Be by the AmaDiba coastal community residing along the Wild Coast. It showed that, whereas the State might own mining rights, human rights belong to people - since these are entrenched in the Constitution, human rights must always trump mining rights.With King Justice Sigcau upholding the human rights of the AmaDiba to decide their local destinies locally, and the South African Human Rights Commission affirming that, the Government was forced to revoke the mining rights it had illegally awarded to an Australian backed venture capital outfit.It was a remarkable triumph of civil courage.

That ought to have been the end of the matter. Alas it wasn’t. King Justice Sigcau was deposed by President Zuma’s Government, intent on removing a troublesome obstacle to both the Perth-based mining entrepreneur Mark Caruso and Sanral CEO Mr Nazir Alli who was determined to ensure his grand civil engineering scheme would prevail – even if it meant undermining the Mpondo Royal family. Would a human-rights based constitutional framework empower a traditional leader with sufficient authority to overcome the power of an elected government? Would the Promise of Justice prevail?